Business owners beware. Especially Republican ones. (Gibson update)

Reason TV has a video update (below) on the story of the federal government’s targeting of Gibson Guitars for supposed violations of the Lacey Act. For those familiar with the story, it is a chilling glimpse into the future for all of us, if we allow Obama and the left’s vision of governance to hold sway in America: Bureaucrats interpreting and making law, and armed government agents storming businesses at will.

It has come out that Juszkiewicz is a Republican donor, while the CEO of one of his principal competitors, C.F. Martin & Company, is a Democratic donor. Martin reportedly uses the same wood, but DOJ hasn’t raided them, leading to speculation that the Obama administration is sending a warning to Republican businessmen that they had better not oppose his re-election, lest they face criminal investigations. Normally such speculation would not be credible, but Eric Holder has politicized the Department of Justice to a point where such questions must be taken seriously.

Seriously indeed. As we have seen again and again, Obama and his people are pretty brazen about rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies. Very little should be put past them, and the different treatment of Martin vs. Gibson should raise alarm bells.

Here’s the latest from Reason.

Video description:

“They…come in with weapons, they seized a half-million dollars worth of property, they shut our factory down, and they have not charged us with anything,” says Gibson Guitars CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, referring to the August 2011 raid on his Nashville and Memphis factories by agents from the Departments of Homeland Security and Fish & Wildlife.

The feds raided Gibson for using an inappropriate tariff code on wood from India, which is a violation of the anti-trafficking statute known as The Lacey Act. At issue is not whether the wood in question was endangered, but whether the wood was the correct level of thickness and finish before being exported from India. “India is wanting to ensure that raw wood is not exported without some labor content from India,” says Juskiewicz.

Andrea Johnson of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) counters that “it’s not up to Gibson to decide which laws…they want to respect.” She points out that Gibson had previously been raided under The Lacey Act for imports from Madagascar.

This much is clear: The government has yet to file any charges or allow Gibson a day in court to makes its case, much less retrieve its materials. “This is not about responsible forestry and sustainable wood or illegal logging, this is about a bureaucratic law,” argues Juszkiewicz, who testified last year before a congressional hearing convened by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). It is, he says, “a blank check for abuse.”

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